Snowden maintains NSA has access to company servers, so someone's lying

http://gigaom.com/2013/07/09/snowden-maintains-the-nsa-has-direct-access-to-company-servers-which-means-someone-is-lying/

by teawithcarl • 13 years ago

14 13 13 years ago

gigaom.com

tater• 13 years ago

There's a difference between lying and carefully choosing your words.

Zigurd• 13 years ago

Really?

Shish2k• 13 years ago

Yes.

thezilch• 13 years ago

In other words, choosing the "least untruthful" words.

chris_mahan• 13 years ago

Is it possible the NSA compromised Google, Facebook, etc. servers without the companies knowing?

krek4• 13 years ago

How is Snowden possibly lying? He's reading verbatim from the NSA documents which use the words "direct access". Also he isn't "maintaining" this, this is part of his original interview from over a month ago.

mpyne3• 13 years ago

Which ones? The PRISM slides said "collection directly from the servers of..." which is not the same as 'direct access'. Are there different NSA documents, if so it would be useful to see the context of the wording in that case.

krek4• 13 years ago

Your quote is accurate, "direct access" is not verbatim. Though "collection directly" and "direct access" seem semantically the same to me in the context of the slide. [1]

The relevant slide is talking about two types of mechanisms the NSA analyst should use. The "Upstream" and "PRISM". It's within the the Prism description that the words "collection directly from the servers of.." is used. So it's not referring to raw data collection through neutral access points, as that's what the "Upstream" is. It's explicitly saying the NSA has direct access to these companies.

[1] http://i.imgur.com/kIEtXjk.jpg

trestles• 13 years ago

These publicly traded companies lying? There's plenty of things that companies are legally obligated to lie about. See Boeing, Raytheon etc.... The fact that it is now a tech company is just new players in the game.

The problem with his claims is that he has made far-reaching accusations such as "I could wiretap the president's email" with no proof. While I wouldn't necessarily be surprised if he could (see the existence of Carnivore), to make that level of a claim without SHOWING and VERIFYING that claim in the same video is frightnigly foolish in my opinion. I'm guessing that it would have to be access to servers since other 'communications' require the actual application. In other words, there would almost need to be application level awareness of this external output point. Again, not impossible but could / should have been presented better.

Snowden maintains NSA has access to company servers, so someone's lying

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